A system and method for ingesting (capturing) digital video media files for storage on a Linux® platform-based computing environment that creates Quicktime Reference-compatible Files in the Linux® environment. Quicktime Reference-compatible Files are created such that they are labeled as not created by Avid's codec, but rather, by a native Quicktime codec. Then, via the system and method of the invention, at the time the Quicktime Reference-compatible Files are created in the Linux® environment, the system and method automatically captures the Avid file and automatically creates hard-links to those files so that the QuickTime Reference-compatible Files refer to the hard links rather than to the original Avid files. That is, rather than using the direct reference to the media files, a hard link is created to provide a second reference to them. In this manner, via said hard links (e.g., object reference), a user is permitted indirect access to all digital audio and video data that is stored in the directory on the storage device, while not requiring access to the original Avid media files. Advantageously, there is no need to convert Avid-formatted files to the Quicktime format.